Brandon Ingram looks at the Los Angeles Lakers’ championship trophies in El Segundo, Calif. on July 5, 2016. (Photo By Robert Casillas/SCNG, file)

Brandon Ingram of the Los Angeles Lakers scores on a jumper over James Harden of the Houston Rockets during a 120-114 season opening Laker win at Staples Center on October 26, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images, file)

KINSTON, N.C. >> Chris Bradshaw stood in the empty Kinston High gym, a warm place on a hot July morning.

“I remember the day Michael Jordan and Laney High came in here and played us,” he said. “He went for 45 points. I said, ‘OK.’”

Banners from six of Kinston’s 11 state championships were on the wall. Jordan only passed through. The real history is homegrown.

In 2012 Brandon Ingram, then 6-foot-5, made all eight free throws in Kinston’s 2-A state championship game against Cuthbertson.

“I wasn’t stressed about it, didn’t feel pressure,” he said the other day after a Lakers’ practice.

He was 15 that day.

His last two free throws wiped out Cuthbertson’s last lead. The Vikings won by three. A year later they beat Cuthbertson again, also by three.

Kinston beat North Rowan by 10 in the 2-A final in 2014. It thrashed West Lincoln by 17 in 2015. Ingram and Darnell Dunn became the first players in state history to win four consecutive championships.

By then Ingram had already navigated a recruiting frenzy and chosen Duke.

He also quit growing two inches per year, as he had from the eighth grade on. His parents, Donald and Joann, had to take him to big-and-tall shops to get shirts for his lengthening arms. Brandon became 6-foot-9 with a 7-3 wingspan, but still remembered how to play point guard. Now he could play in the lane. He superseded positions. At Duke he played big forward when Amile Jefferson got hurt, but in the West Regional in Anaheim he operated from the top of the key.

He became the second overall pick in the NBA draft. He is with the New Lakers, a prime example of the New Athlete. Michigan’s Jabril Peppers plays all over the gridiron. The Cubs’ Javier Baez brings all the gloves with him.

“Sometimes I’d have to whisper in his ear when we were down five or 10, that it was time to take over,” said Bradshaw, who coached Ingram in the seventh and eighth grades. “He grew four inches between eighth grade and the ninth. I knew he was getting ready to be a problem. I told his dad he was going to be special.”

Three-on-three

The Ingrams live in a handsome two-story brick house outside town. Donald runs a gym, known as Martin C. Freeman or Teachers Memorial. Brandon’s brother Bo helped Kinston win a state title in 2008. Bo went to junior college and then Texas-Arlington, and he is at Brandon’s side in L.A.

Donald also played. For years he was on the Hoop It Up tour, a nationwide 3-on-3 league.

One day he was opposing David Thompson, who led N.C. State to the 1974 sacking of the UCLA dynasty. Thompson was a holy man in North Carolina, far bigger than Jordan became. He was the first mainstream African-American sports star, with an outlandish leap and a deadpan serenity. Thompson played at Reynolds Coliseum, where Ingram hit all those foul shots.

Donald was impressed when he ran into Thompson or Orlando Woolridge, but not shy.

“When Donald crossed half court it was going up,” Bradshaw said.

“There were four of us,” Donald said, “because we had alternates. O.J. Sheppard, Terry Shiver, David Lawrence and me. We’d wind up flying from everywhere and meeting at the airport. The finals were in Venice Beach one year. They’d block off the streets wherever we played. A cellular phone company started sponsoring us. And if you kept winning you might make $10,000.”

Donald’s teams went after matchups. Otherwise, everybody did everything. In 2015, Golden State won an NBA title doing that. Its assistant coach, Luke Walton, now coaches Brandon. Luke’s dad Bill led the UCLA team that lost to Thompson.

Few strangers in basketball. Fewer boundaries.

“You just played,” Donald said.

Signing up for this

Teachers Memorial is like a basketball Wal-Mart. Fight the crowds, and you can find any game you want.

“We put a piece of paper up there,” Donald explained. “The first five who sign up play together. They play the next five. It’s open gym. If you win you stay on the court. I’m 50 and I might be playing with guys 18, 40, 26, 35. That’s why I don’t worry about Brandon’s weight (195). He’s been banging with grown men for a long time.

“After the gym closed, he’d do his own workout. I never had to push him. When I grabbed my keys to go to the gym, he’d grab his stuff.”

Brandon remembers winning “at least 10 games” in a row several times.

“I remember the intensity and the energy,” he said. “You lose, you might be out 6-7 games.”

That, he said, is why Kinston punches so far above its weight in basketball. It sits between Raleigh and the Atlantic and numbers about 21,000. But Cedric Maxwell, Jerry Stackhouse (who sponsored Ingram’s AAU team), Charles Shackleford, Herbert Hill, Reggie Bullock and Mitchell Wiggins all came from Kinston or Lenoir County.

Said North Carolina coach Roy Williams earlier this year, “I’d rather go recruit in Kinston than New York City.”

Not everything else has thrived. The city has lost one-eighth of its population in the past 50 years. It relied on textiles and tobacco, which became unreliable. There are patches of recovery, but basketball is the civic ID.

“There are so many gyms,” Brandon said. “It’s a small town, not much to do. For a lot of kids (basketball is) a way out.”

Yet Ingram stayed as long as he could. He didn’t transfer to one of those pseudo-schools where the basketball team is the false front, like Rock Ridge in “Blazing Saddles.”

“I’m a homebody,” he said. “Kinston is where my friends are. I knew I could get what I needed by staying at a public school, and I wanted those championships.”

Recruiting was a spectacle. “We had paparazzi,” said Donald, who told Brandon to cut down his list of schools.

“And call the coaches back like a man and tell them you’re not coming,” he instructed. “They didn’t text you to recruit you. Don’t text them.”

Duke always was the leader. Ingram was a fan of Kyle Singler, another wide-ranging player. And Duke offered big minutes. Ingram averaged 17.3 points and 6.8 rebounds. He shot 41 percent from “three.” He was the ACC Rookie of the Year.

Throughout, Ingram’s sleepy eyes betrayed nothing.

“Sometimes I look at him and I wonder what he’s thinking,” Donald said. “(Kentucky coach) John Calipari and Bill Self (Kansas) are coming through and he doesn’t seem excited. I’m jumping in, trying to take pictures of those cats.

“But he’s progressed and he’s doing something I wanted to do. They say I’m living through my son. Well, I put clothes on his back for 18 years. If he wants to reverse the roles, I’m OK with that.”